If you’ve ever wondered how pictures of you French-kissing a giant chicken ended up on Flickr, you’ll be glad to know there’s a scientific explanation: bars use loud dance music to get you drunk.

A study to be published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research on the effects of music levels on drinking in bars found that loud music makes you drink more in less time.

Scientists randomly varied the volume level of music played in bars, and then observed how frequently patrons ordered drinks. They found that high sound levels led to increased drinking, within a decreased amount of time.

Gueguen and his colleagues offered two hypotheses for why this may have occurred.

“One, in agreement with previous research on music, food and drink, high sound levels may have caused higher arousal, which led the subjects to drink faster and to order more drinks,” said Gueguen. “Two, loud music may have had a negative effect on social interaction in the bar, so that patrons drank more because they talked less.”

“This is the first time that an experimental approach in a real context found the effects of loud music on alcohol consumption,”said lead investigator Nicolas Gueguen.”

So next time you’re at a bar, some great music comes on and you find yourself ordering another drink, it’s probably the result of some barroom science.